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Monday, April 20, 2015

Quote Me

7th grade special ed English. They had a really easy assignment. Or, at least I thought it was easy.

It was an assignment on capitalization. There were a dozen or so sentences with no capitals, and the students had to identify where the capitals were to go. So, they indicated the first word of each sentence and figured they were done with it.

And then they went crazy.

Well, that took way too short a time. So, I picked up one of their papers and perused it. And started counting.

"You missed 24 capitals. Find them."

As I went to each student and counted, I could see them wince. The higher the numbers went, the more they looked at me like, "I couldn't have missed that many." Well, yeah, they did.

They had missed names. Places. Nationalities.

Half the sentences contained quotes. And every single one of them missed capitalizing the first words of those.

This would have been a great opportunity to take the time and go over the capitalization rules with them. Unfortunately, I was using all my energy just trying to keep them under some semblance of control. And failing.

As a parent of a child with mental disabilities and processing issues I applaud your efforts and your 'coolness' lolol. Sometimes my kid baffles me completely. "Um kiddo it's RIGHT THERE->" (I still don't think she sees it at the end of my finger O.o) lolol I love her to pieces ;)

I second Birgit's comment. The best thing that happened to me today is... My husband traded his raffle winning at his bowling league end of year party for a six pack of a local IPA. He drinks wimpy light beers, I rarely drink so it will last me a month. He probably could have traded for something he liked.

I TOTALLY understand. My youngest alone is the equivalent of about 3 unruly kids. Seriously. He's 8 and I still can't take my eyes off him unless I'm inviting disaster. (Think knives, spilled food, writing on places like furniture or walls...you might think I was a bad parent. Nope. He's just that "challenging.")

I know adults who still don't capital the names of places. I had to point it out to someone I was beta reading for and respectfully told them I couldn't read anymore of their book (I read the first two pages) until they fixed these things I pointed out. It was a disaster!

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About Me

I am a writer, a knitter, and a substitute teacher, not necessarily in that order. TV is my background noise of choice while I work on whatever project comes to hand. I'm currently between novel projects.